Qualcomm was always a very innovative company, but it needed a lot of time to master and conquer new markets.

This time, it looks like Qualcomm is working on a Chromecast rival that supports UHD 3840x2160 resolution, that many punters know as 4K. Google's rather successful Chromecast stick can support Full HD (1080p), but not more than that. There is a need for better than 1920x1080 resolution in the future, especially as most high-end TVs are coming exclusively with UHD 3840x2160 panels and streaming providers like Netflix are starting to offer some content in 4K.

Qualcomm's solution can stream 4K and it is using Snapdragon 800 in order to make this high resolution possible. This was Qualcomm's best phone and tablet SoC in 2013, and it can now power the Chromecast rival with 4K. There might be a version with an even faster and newer Snapdragon processor, but for now Qualcomm is demonstrating the red painted stick with a Snadragon 800 inside. We would not be surprised by a 20nm Snapdragon 810 version either. With MHL support over HDMI, the stick could theoretically be powered by HDMI, but this would work only on select devices, and for most others USB power will be a necessity.

Currently this is Qualcomm's prototype device, a proof of concept. The company wants to show the platform capabilities and it hopes that someone will jump and make a retail / etail product from it, using the reference platform.

The stick can run a full version of Android with a choice of full Android feature support, of just the streaming part. It uses WiFi to handle streaming and it will be possible to use LTE-U Unlicensed frequency and do the streaming over 5GHz LTE. With the right price, this product might actually sell well, but we are sure that Google will refresh its Chromecast with 4K support when the time is right.

Amazon has realised that the Chromecast was one of the most successful products ever to come from the house of Google. This inexpensive USB stick stole thunder from Miracast devices and offered a trade-off solution for people who wanted to connect its Google powered device with HDMI powered TV.

Now Amazon has come up with something of its own.

Amazon Fire TV Stick is, as the name implies, a HDMI stick that you plug in your HDMI port on your TV. It needs a USB power to run. Amazon’s HDMI TV stick has a bit more grunt and has a dual core processor inside, 1GB memory as well as 8GB of flash storage. It also uses dual band / dual antenna (MIMO) wireless and ships with a remote.

Its main competitor Chromecast has a single core, 512 MB memory, 2GB storage, has no dual band of dual antenna and comes without remote.

Amazon claims that it has 200 games ready for Fire TV Stick users and you can buy a controller for your gaming experience. Voice search is also available with additional remote controller. Amazon is using quite bold statement for its voice search technology "Voice search that actually works."

Users who like more power would be better off with the Amazon Fire TV as you get a quad core CPU with better GPU, 2GB memory vs 1 GB with the stick, included voice search support remote, support for high performance games (yeah right), Ethernet, optical audio connector all of what Fire TV Stick is missing. However Fire TV sells for $99 and matches the price of Google Nexus Player.

Amazon Fire TV Stick is selling for $39 for non prime customers and for the next two days Amazon prime customers can get this stick for $19. The earliest pre-orders will ship on November 19th in the US while due to a popular demand, it might take a bit longer for civilized countries to get one.

This is another tool which makes watching Netflix, Hulu plus or Amazon prime video a bit easier as well as listening Pandora or watching funny videos on YouTube. It comes with a nice price too.

Google announced a while ago that it will eventually update the Chromecast with Android mirroring and it has finally lived up to its promise.

As of today, those using an Android device will no longer have to rely on third-party apps that will let you mirror your favorite Android device's screen to the TV. Thanks to the latest update for the Chromecast app, users can mirror any Android smartphone or tablet screen to the TV as long as they are on the same WiFi network as the Crhomecast, which allows you to stream anything from your mobile screen to the TV, simply by selecting Cast Screen from the Chromecast app.

Those running any of the Google Nexus device will also notice that the new feature has appeared in the Quick Settings menu. Of course, Google still states that this new feature is still in beta and will roll out on popual Android phones or tablets from Samsung, HTC, LG and others sometime in the next few days.

In case you are wondering, you should be looking for the 1.7 update of the Chromecast app.

Despite what most people want you to believe, Chromecast won't let you play your personal videos and photos. Even with the last update and the Real Player could, it won't play your video from your Android device. Instead it uploads it to the cloud and then plays it from the cloud. It will mirror Netflix that works quite well but, this is where the functionality stops.

Miracast on the other hand, in the form of a USB stick such as new Belkin F7D7501, solves this basic problem. This device mirrors whatever you see on your phone or tablet, all in 1080p resolution. Belkin promises effortless plug-and-play setup and since it's small and compact can be carried around wherever your job takes you. Since it connects on HDMI you need an USB power from your TV, device nearby or an external adaptor, just as you do with a Chromecast stick.

The Belkin F7D7501 Miracast dongle will display movies, photos, games or apps on any HDMI capable monitor or TV set in full HD 1080p resolution. We don’t know the exact range of this particular device but it should work at least up to 10 meters (32 feet). Miracast is built into Windows 8.1 so we expect that this device will work with this one too, making it more versatile.

The downside is the $79.99 price tag and the fact that it needs Android 4.2.x or higher. The latter is Google's fault, as they only added Miracast support in the Android 4.2 specification and therefore any device running an older version of the operating system won't support this screen sharing device.

If it cost half as much, or if it was at least priced between $40 and $50, it would have a chance to take a toll on Chromecast sales. As we implied above, this device will do much more than Chromecast and it will let you play private collection movies, photos or anything you have on your android tablet or a phone.

Google now has three Google Play edition phones and the LG G Pad 8.3 tablet. The list of Google Play edition phones includes old acquaintances like HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4 and a relative newcomer in the form of Sony’s Z Ultra.

Sony and Samsung are stuck with a rather high $649 price for an unlocked device, while the HTC One Google Play edition is tad cheaper at $599 price, leaving the 8.3 inch LG tablet as the cheapest Google Play edition device that is not sold under Nexus brand and costs $349.

One thing that has caught our eye is that if you purchase Nexus 7 together with Chromecast, Google will include a $35 Google Play credit and free shipping in the gift box. This makes the cheapest Nexus 7 16GB black edition currently priced at $229 a bit cheaper making it effectively $35 cheaper as this is the current value of Chromecast. Free shipping also helps but there is currently no 16 GB version of Nexus 7 white, this one is only available at $269 32GB Wifi version.

The 4G LTE versions for both T-Mobile and AT&T will set you back $349 for a 32GB version of a tablet and won't come in white, at least not for the time being. It is unbelievable for us to see that Nexus 7 webpage claims that the tablet features Android 4.3 when the actual tablet ships and upgrades to Android 4.4.2. Sloppy job chaps.

Chromecast is probably one of the most hyped technologies that showed its face this year. Despite its virtual capability to show content on your TV wirelessly, it doesn’t actually let you share your screen, and it mirrors only certain applications. It doesn’t support Google pushed Miracast Wireless display standard that makes it even more controversial.

Still for anyone that owns this $35 powered HDMI dongle that has a Vivante graphics inside, the list of supported applications has grown tremendously. It all started with support for Google Play Music, Google Play TV & Video, YouTube, Netflix and Hulu Plus and it grown to support HBO GO and Pandora.

Now Google promises seven new applications including Vevo, RedBull.TV, Songza, Plex, PostTV, Viki and a blast from the past called RealPlayer cloud. We are not sure that most of these applications are really mind-blowing, Vevo will show some videos but the RealPlayer according to Google will let you "watch your personal video collection on your TV. No wires."

This is the one we have been all waiting for and we hope that Google plans to fix a nasty disability of a Chromecast, as you cannot cast a chrome tab from an android device. At this time this feature works from Windows, Mac or Chromebook Pixel, all twelve of them sold, but not on Android.

With some more effort behind it, there is a chance that Chromecast might become something that we could easily recommend to our readers, as long as it offers Airplay-like capability and let you play your own videos and pictures from Andoid based phones and tablets.

Our biggest issue with Google's Chromcast HDMI dongle was the fact that it cannot play your personal videos or photos, it was just mirroring YouTube, Netflix or Chrome browser content and playing it on your TV.

Now with the help of a tweaker that goes under the name of Koushik Dutta you can play some of your Android content including gallery, Dropbox or Google drive content on your Chromecast powered TV. The application goes under the name of AirCast and is currently a two day trial app that will self-destruct. It can be downloaded here and there is a big hope that this will make it to a longer standing application at a later date.

The way the application works is that you simply hit the share button in the application and your Chromecast can play a selected video or photo. This is what we wanted in first place but Google decided to stay away from it at launch. We wonder what Google has to say about this application, but with this app we see a great future for the cheap Chromecast dongle.

Although most of the announcements made at Google's latest event were not a big surprise, the company managed to pull a shiny new rabbit out of its hat by announcing Chromecast, a smart HDMI stick device that runs on a proprietary version of Chrome OS, allows users to stream any content from "basically" any device via WiFi and even control some of the TV functions. Google Chromecast looks like an evolution of the Nexus Q, a short-lived device that never managed to get traction. Chromecast smells like Nexus Q done right.

Chromecast is a 2-inch long device that plugs into your spare HDMI input on the TV and naturally integrates Google's services like Youtube, Play Music, Play Video and Google's Chrome app. It sounds like great device that can even switch your TV on, find the right input source for itself and start playing whatever you decided to put on it via Chromecast button on some other device like the smartphone or tablet. It can even control the volume or skip videos and is capable of switching between devices since it is tied to your Google account.

It can also show your Chrome tabs and put them on the TV screen, browse photos on your Google+ account and do practically anything that you might want, stream from your portable device like a notebook, smartphone or tablet to your TV. The best part of the story is that it works on both Android and iOS and Google will also release the new Google Cast SDK for Android, iOS and Chrome (Windows, Mac OS and Chrome OS) that will allow third-party developers to add features.

Priced at US $35, the Chromecast is available on Google Play in the US for now and should be heading to retail on July 28th. Unfortunately, Google did not shed any light regarding the worldwide availability but hopefully we shouldn't wait too long.

Google again managed to launch an affordable device that practically has no direct competition on the market and we are sure that this little toy will be quite successful. You can check out a neat little video for Chromecast below.